Things You Hear While Listening

Well, while not taking part in "gossip", I can't help but listen to it.

Yesterday I rode a different bus route, and the bus stopped at a high school and picked up 40 kids (no school buses here?). I was surrounded by teenage girls, yakking away about Billy liking Sally, and Carol was such a klutz...etc. I thought to myself, wait 40 years and things will be the same. Old fogies at the "Home" gossip like school girls!

Here, I listen to the elderly gossips whine about their medications, physical ailments, each others ailments, the status of so & so's mental health...many are nutters. They speak of how "Dave" smells so bad, never takes a shower or "Mary" is a loon and her room is haunted. There is "Horny Harry" age 82, "Gas Mask" Bob who has a special vent out his window cause his room's air is poison, which is why he wears a gas mask.

Then, there is a friend from the shelter, who got a job as a Metro Bus Drive at
$19/hr, but still collects bottles and cans for the 5 cent return, and thinks he is getting three "merit" raises in 2009. "Curly", the laziest janitor I have ever met, says he asked for a 7.5% raise this year and thinks he deserves it. Uh huh.

I hear people complain about not having enough food or money, yet they all have cell phones, cigarettes, and can buy dope and booze. Their "dealers" even deliver right to the "Home".

They brag about their prison time, run ins with the law, drug use, etc. Old hippies, still being hippies.

Now I am not from the upper class of society, but never in my life have I been exposed to these types of folks, Colorado Springs being the same. People I knew back in Michigan or Northern Colorado were professionals...teachers, engineers, government workers, grad students, real estate people, etc. They also gossiped and spoke of things that were of little interest to me, but dang....a whole different level. I can only imagine what a third world country must be like.